The Fan Zone
By JadeRabbyt
Agents of Luve: Part 4 (The Good Part!)
The herd outside, incredible as it may seem, was starting to get bored. You can only spend so much time looking for an invisible boy. Accordingly, the psycho squirrel mix decided to order a livestock-shooting catapult from my garbage men.
Now, most people would consider it a bad idea to give thirty-odd eccentric fans something that shoots four hundred pound mooing objects into near earth orbit. However, most people are also ignorant saps. It's a proven scientific fact that there is very little that is more entertaining than watching a person get drenched with airborne cow poop. It's also a proven scientific fact that most kids, given the opportunity, would love to punch big holes in their school's roof, and in accordance with this unshakable scientific research, the herd of squirrels and psychopaths were provided (and safely distracted) with a gigantic wooden cow-pig-and-chicken shooting catapult.
In the meantime, Sam is still trapped in the classroom. Gotta do something about that.
I tell my garbage men to ring up Cakreut12. "You wanna do a job for me?"
"Eeeee! I get a cameo!" She does a little jig of joy, the tail of her squirrel suit bouncing merrily.
I smile. "Yes, yes you do. You also get a huge cheese-mallet, plated titanium armor, and rocket shoes. Get the mallet to Sam." I wave to one of my guys, dispatching him to deliver the items.
"Awesome." There's scuffling on the other end of the line. I see a shadow on the grass--the silhouette of a catapult in action.
"Whadja launch?"
"Ishiyama's car. We thought we'd get creative."
Through the camera, I see the shadow of the car hurtling through the air. I really hope it isn't going where I think it's going. "Hey, where's it going to land?"
Cakreut squints up at the sky. "Um, I think it's heading for a tree…"
Crap. Crap crap crap.
CRUNCH.
I pull the headphones off my ears as thirty-odd fangirls screech into the headset. "DANNNEEEEEE!"
"Argh!" Danny, revealed by his car-crushed tree, phases out and jets into the school. The squirrels and psychopaths rush after him, jumping pathetically against the side of the school before dashing around for the door.
"EEEEEEEE!" they squeal.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. "Crazy fangirls. Hey Cakreut, you got the stuff."
"Uh yeah. The rocket-shoes are fantastic, by the way… But I wanted to follow Danny too…"
"The only person who's even going to get near Danny is Sam. Free her, follow her, and you'll find Danny." And speaking of Sam…
I click off Cak's frequency and pull up a camera, just to make sure our lovable vegetarian hasn't killed anybody yet. She hasn't, but it looks like I've intervened just in time.
"We say all animals are retarded," declares a psycho. Sam, currently duct-taped to a chair, glares daggers at the guy.
"Well, I say you're retarded. What do you people want with Danny, anyway?"
Psycho gets starry-eyes. "We want to kiss him…"
"And give him foot-massages…" adds another.
"And RULE THE WORLD!"
"Yeah! WORLD DOMY-NATION!" they cheer.
If Sam could have put her head in her hands, she would have. "Rrrrr…."
The building shudders from the impact of a large pig. A moment later, it shudders again from the impact of Cakreut12.
Plaster blasts from the ceiling as something shiny and silver busts through the ceiling and crashes to the floor. "Weapons delivery!" Cak slices through Sam's duct tape with one sharp edge of the armor and shoves the heavy cheese-mallet into her hands. The handle is wooden, but the crushing part is made of one big round of parmesan cheese.
Sam sticks out her tongue. "Ewww…" Cak giggles and pantomimes the action of smashing things. Sam's mouth forms a startled 'O' of dawning comprehension. She gives the psychos a sneaky look.
"Um…" mumble the wide-eyed psychos.
WHAM! goes Sam's mallet.
She hurries out into the hall, shouting for Danny. I keep the camera on the psychos a moment longer. Their faces have made some interesting shapes on the plaster walls, but it looks like they'll be okay. Nevertheless, I send out two more of my lackeys to provide them with some stun-power light sabers. Not enough to hurt, but more than enough to melt the cheese. No sense in making it an unfair fight.
XXX
Sam is dashing through the halls, clutching her heavy cheesy mallet of vengeance in one hand. In spite of her professed pacifism, she looks like she could send a Great White swimming for its mother.
I flip idly through the cameras and wonder, vaguely, if I've crossed a line somewhere. But that's ridiculous. My staff is made of garbage men, my audience loves to launch cows into orbit, and my 'special guests' are consistently being attacked/smooched/pummeled with any and every type of object known to man, and several that, before this show, probably weren't. This is just business as usual.
Maybe I should consider a job at the bookstore…
XXX
Sam's boots thump on the school's linoleum tiling. The psycho's sneakers patter after her down the halls. Squirrels and psychos, fresh from the barnyard-animal/car launching, shuffle around in the general direction that Danny supposedly went. Danny himself, predictably, is jetting through the halls in search of Sam and Tucker. Through some kind of amazing, incredible coincidence, they're all headed for the same junction in the hallways.
"Can't miss this!" I grab my burgundy sport jacket off the back of my leather wheely chair and tell the garbage men to keep an eye on things. I want to be there in person for this particular impending collision.
Dashing out of the janitor-closet-base I run into the herd of psycho/squirrel people.
"Which way?" they shout.
"Just keep on going down this hall. You'll find 'im!" I press a button on my watch and rockets pop out of my boots. The squirrels stare in confusion. I grin at them. "What, you don't think I'd let Cak have all the fun with the rockets?" I push the flaming foot-jets into gear. "Ciao!"
Arriving at the intersection seconds ahead of the others, I take up a relatively inconspicuous pose against a bank of lockers. As an afterthought, I pull a lollypop out of my jacket and stick it, thoughtfully, in my mouth.
I wave at Danny as he arrives at the four-way intersection. His eyes flare as he catches sight of my smirking mug.
"YOU!"
I shake my head. "Nuh-uh. You want to worry about them." I thumb the hall behind him, where twenty or thirty shrieking fangirls bust out, reaching to grab him. Danny jerks away, about to run.
I shake my head at him. "What? You're not going to wait for Sam?" Right on cue, Samantha Manson rounds the corner in all her nostril-flaring cheese-mallet-bearing glory. She stops in her tracks, seeing the floating ghost boy.
"They're right behind me!"
"Argh! Me too!" Danny dodges the leaping grasps of my overly enthusiastic audience. The squirrels and psychos are starting to get feisty with each other, but there's a general consensus among them that Danny needs to be brought closer to the ground.
Danny catches my eye and shakes his fists. I shrug innocently and make a smooching noise around my lollypop. Good thing there's other people distracting him. It looks like he'd really like to take a few shots at me. Fortunately for all concerned, Danny doesn't have time for that. But he does have time to look over fearfully at Sam, who's whacking away at the psychos like a farmer during reaping season trying to keep them off Danny.
He floats clear of the ruckus and calls, tentatively, "Sam…"
"What? What's wrong?" A psycho squawks as she plows into it with her round of parmesean.
He does this little hand-wringing thing. It's soooo cute.
"Ummm… You remember, uh, that one time, in the park, with Valerie…"
Sam is beginning to sense that things are about to get a lot weirder. "Yeah…"
"And we did that whole uh, 'fake-out make-out' thing…" He does the little quoty things with his fingers. I'm evil, and I really should be feeling guilty about all this, but oh man is it ever fun to watch.
Sam holds her mallet a little less confidently. "Yeah…"
"Well, um… I mean…" The dude turns PINK. You could grow plants by the light of Danny's face it's so red. He wipes a hand across his forehead and braces himself. "I mean, HEY everybody, look at me!" As one, the audience turns it psychotic, squirrely, or otherwise odd-looking eyes to Danny. Our Hero forces a smile, and—after making sure he's got everybody's attention (he does)—swoops down and locks lips with Sam. The audience sucks every molecule out of the spacious Casper High with its enormous, collective, gasp. My lollypop even falls out of my mouth.
Sam was ready for it, more or less, but mostly less. She looks like she's kissing a brick wall; Danny looks like he's kissing a flaming reptile.
Tucker bounds in and, upon surveying the arena, looks like he's been hit with a brick wall thrown by a flaming reptile. "WHOA, DID I MISS SOMETHING!"
With that, the spell breaks. Danny and Sam gasp and jump away from each other. Danny turns back to human. My and the rest of the audience reach down and scrap our jaws off the floor. Danny and Sam try with absolutely zero success to act normal around each other, making many semi-apologetic gestures and mumbled excuses. The excuses die out, and while the others look at Tucker, from the corner of my eye I see Danny go ghost and phase the two of them out of sight.
"Seriously. Who are you people, what are you doing, and what infernal power did you use on my friends to make them smooch each other."
"Blackmail," I explain.
Tucker rolls his eyes. "You went through all that just to make those two kiss?"
"Pretty much."
"Then you can go now. Please," he says. "Those squirrel suits… they freak me out." Tucker backs away slowly, heading back down the way Danny and Sam went.
I laugh and lead the audience back to the bat-cave/janitor's closet base for desuiting, debugging, and some delicious refreshments.
XXX
I sigh, clapping the dust off my hands. "Well, I'd say that was the roaring success." My garbage men nod in agreement. The party has ended, the audience has gone back to the mystical world of 'Real Life,' and all that's left is to pack things up and head on back to the (hopefully, by now) reconstructed studio. I flip through my cameras one last time, looking back nostalgically on the injured livestock, structural damage, and general unsightly disaster my audience managed to wreak on this unsuspecting high school campus.
Hel-lo, what's this?
Danny and Sam pop up on the monitors. They're up on the roof, and from the way human-mode Danny is checking the place out, it looks like they've just got there. Fortunately he doesn't see the camera, which is cleverly disguised as a radio antenna. (Still don't know how the garbage guys managed that trick.) I lean forward, adjusting the volume.
"Look," he says. "I'm really, really sorry about that. That whole thing was planned by that crazy talk-show girl."
"Yeah, I know, I saw that little executive back in the school." I ignore the insults for the grander purpose of illegal snoopery.
Danny rubs the back of his head uncomfortably. "So, you're not mad or anything? She said that was the only way to get everybody to leave…"
"No, I understand." Their eyes meet for a second.
Danny looks away, scuffing the gravel roof with the toe of his shoe. Sam bites her lip, leaning just a little too far to the left, bumping shoulders with Danny. He looks down at her, a little puzzled, but she covers it up with a loud declaration of how awkward the kiss was.
Danny chuckles. "Yeah, that's for sure."
"I mean, that would never happen like, naturally, with us, would it?" Sam looks up at him, a questioning kind of smile on her face.
Danny is gradually picking up on the fact that he's being tested. "Oh yeah, definitely not." This denial is also obviously exaggerated.
Sam looks up at Danny, her eyes a slightly embarrassed, tentative question. Danny doesn't look away, and slowly, very slowly, he steps closer to her and—with a final awkward hesitation—they close the distance and kiss like perfectly normal, loving human beings. They both melt a little bit after the first second or two, and Danny brings his arms up around her.
So cute… "Awwwwwwww…"
The garbage men look over at me and shake their heads.
"Philistines." I reach over and politely click off the monitor, leaving the two in privacy. "You garbage people are clever, but ya just don't understand us fangirls."
Then again, who does?
A/N: Thanks to all my loyal viewers and reviewers. Hope you all liked this!